THIS SHOULD NOT BE A PROBLEM

This post is not intended as a bleg but if you feel you can help, please chime in.  Anyway, long story short: it came to pass that I needed to replace (heh!) my Iphone 3.  The new guy arrived all healthy and squalling, kitted out with the new operating system (at any rate, new to me). Some things actually seemed to work better: I think it charges and downloads faster. But a few hours in I a message I had never seen before:

Charging is not supported with this accesssory.

Oh. Ah.  Inconvenient, in that I am always charging while using accessories.  But I guess I can live with that.  I  did get a little nervous a few hours later I saw the message come up when I wasn't charging anything at all.  And that was when I did what any decent researcher does: I went to Google.  I typed it the phrase (above) and I put it in quotes.  WHAM: 81,800 hits--not a lot, you will say, for a Google search, except recall that this is a seven-word phrase in quotes.  Evidently, it seems that I am not alone.  And that this happens a lot.  

To make life manageable, I cut myself down to the last month (405 hits) and started reading.   And I certainly got advice.  O boy, did I get advice.  Here's stuff from a three-page comment thread, starting last spring and updated as recently as last week: 

 "If its a third party USB cable it may tell you that message.  If its the Apple cable, try resetting you iPhone, if that fails a restore may need to be done" ... "Cleaned connectors as suggested, no dice. Changed sockets on USB hub still no dice. I then plugged the cable into the wall socket charger and no warning sign and iPhone 3GS." ..  "I already tried system upgrade, resetting it, and even forced restart."

 And finally, the most recent (at the moment):

Apple i am sick of yoyr company ignoring this major issue and conflicts with your phones.i have tried many different remedies to get my phone to charge properly i have restored my device even purchased 3 cords n 3 chargers the issue stops for a inane amount of time and starts back up again. This message is driving me nuts is there any thing you can give your customers to stop this issue software update maybe?? 

 You get the drift.  Actually I thought I had the problem solved for a while yesterday but it started popping up again last and I've changed plugs so far three times while writing this  screed blog post.  If anybody can offer me a magic bullet, I'd love to have it but meanwhile--I'm with the last quoted commenter: this just shouldn't be happening.  For a company that makes its bones on product quality, it's a shande and a scandal. 

[Feel better? Yes, thanks, a little. But the charger still isn't working.]